Trivialization of concerns about theocracy

I've had more than a few of my believer friends try to reassure me about the threat of a theocracy being imposed on the USA.  In fact, some of them claim the opposite process is underway - attacks on religion from the heathen secular humanists, not vice-versa.  However I might feel about it, the objective evidence is that religion is doing quite well in the USA, with its tax exemption helping to bolster its bulging coffers, with more than 40,000 denominations of christianity alone (according to about.com), with some 350,000 congregations (according to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research), and with a strong majority of the population here in the USA.  If the humanists are attacking, their attacks have been pretty ineffective!  The biggest challenge some believers face is not being allowed to force their beliefs, doctrine, and icons onto all Americans!

Of course, many of my believer friends are "moderates" who have no particularly strong drive to transform the USA into a theocracy, so they essentially judge the probability of the USA becoming a theocracy to be ... well ... trivial.  The minority of believers who do wish to impose their religion on the USA (so-called dominionists) are also trivialized by my believer friends, seeing them as marginalized extremists (more or less as I do).  Where we differ is that I'm still concerned about politically active minorities with a threatening agenda - history provides examples where tiny minorities nevertheless eventually came to power.  So long as things are going well, these minorities snipe away on the margins of society, but as history shows repeatedly, these splinter groups can come to the forefront when society falls into chaos.  One example is the Bolsheviks, who despite their name (which means "the majority" - a clever publicity trick by Lenin) - had always been a tiny minority party, until they seized power in 1918, during the social and economic chaos following the earlier overthrow of the Tsars.  The moderates were overwhelmed by Bolshevik propaganda tricks and lies and could never mount an effective opposition as an alternative to the radical rhetoric, blatant falsehoods, and slogans of the Bolsheviks.  Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?  Eventually, the moderates eventually either joined the Bolsheviks, or they were killed, or sent to the Gulag.

I'm also told that having "In god we trust" on our currency, or "under god" in the pledge of allegiance, or the ten commandments displayed on government property, and so on are only trivialities.  Why should nonbelievers or those of other religions be upset?  Just ignore them.  Trivialities can safely be ignored, right?  What harm do they cause?  Besides, we're only exercising our religious freedoms, so why can't you leave well enough alone?  The intent seems clear:  by trivializing the concerns of nonbelievers, they seek to end any effort to change these "trivialities" to conform with Constitutional mandates.

Since the founding of the American government with the adoption of the US Constitution, there has been, up until recently, a slow but meaningful decrease of the intrusions of religion in the government.  School prayers have been virtually abolished.  Religious holiday displays on government property are being challenged and removed, for the most part, by judicial orders.  Much progress has been made to exclude religion from government, although more remains to be done, of course.  This is all consistent with the "wall of separation" envisioned by Jefferson and many of the framers of the Constitution.  Throughout this process, that wall of separation has served both secular and religious groups well - clearly, as the numbers I gave at the beginning show, most religions have prospered under the secular Constitution and the wall of separation.

The insertion of "In god we trust" on our currency began in 1864, during a religious revival brought about in part by the horrors of the Civil War.  Coincidentally, both sides claimed the deity to be on their side!  The phrase "Under god" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, during a time of heightened fears resulting from the Soviet threat in the Cold War.

But the dominionists yearn for a mythical, simpler past -- a completely imaginary picture of a time in our past when religion was that "good old-time religion" (that, among other things, dominated the lives of most Americans, dictating for many, including nonbelievers, how to think, what to think, and what to do) -- and so wish to roll back the clock, re-imposing their religion as the controlling factor in everyone's life.  They see this as the cure-all for what ails us at the moment - such evils as LGBT marriage, abortion, uppity women who demand their rights, pornography being openly sold and displayed for anyone to see, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and so on, and on, and on ... .  The dominionists seek to seize control over all of us, regardless of race, color, or creed.  And depending on which religion winds up the leader of a possible theocracy, all other religions and moderates better watch out!  Dominionists will have no problem imposing their will by any means necessary - they have the absolute truth and the deity on their side, after all.

If the aforementioned "trivialities" are so trivial, then why don't the believers step aside and allow us simply to abolish them?  Or even help us to abolish them?  If they're so trivial to believers, then why do those believers support their retention?  The hypocrisy always reveals the lie (an aphorism coined by my friend RJ Evans).  Believers worked hard to impose these tokens of religiosity onto our nation!  They didn't consider them trivial at all, and still don't!!  Freethinkers are said to be exaggerating their importance but make no mistake - believers also think they're important.   They're stepping stones to future intrusions of religion into government.

We're not a nation united "under god" at all!  We're a nation united under the Constitution!  Our national slogan originally was not "In god we trust" - it was the Latin phrase E pluribus unum (from many, one) that concisely and clearly expresses the national spirit of unity as Americans, inclusive of all human diversity and offering equal opportunity to all.  Religions, by their very nature, are divisive and exclusionary, which is why they make a dangerous moral compass for any state, secular or religious.  Our concerns are decidedly not trivialities - they're important as serious matters of principle:  the principles set forth in the US Constitution.

My christian believer friends seem secure in their place because they can't imagine anything bad happening as a result of their religion.  They're part of the overwhelming majority.  How could a radical splinter movement of christians threaten them?  Hence, they see my concerns as being paranoia over trivialities.  I see their lack of concern as being complacent - the moderates may well eventually be forced to choose between renouncing their personal beliefs and supporting the radical agenda of the victors, or being killed, or imprisoned, or "reeducated".

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This blog owes its origin to a live discussion on the American Heathen show.

Probability abused to justify theism

Warning:  this post is rather longer than my usual postings.

One popular pseudo-scientific argument used by religious believers to justify their faith in a guiding deity is based on probability, or more correctly, the abuse of probability.  The use of probability in science is common, but unfortunately even some scientists have misconceptions about it.

The believer argument goes something like this:  that the existing universe could have come about by chance is so extremely unlikely as to have an infinitesimal probability of having happened.  There must have been a guiding hand in the creation of the universe, in the form of the believer’s favorite anthropomorphic deity.

The primary flaw in this crude attempt at a justification for belief in a supernatural deity is its mischaracterization of the unbeliever’s argument.  Yes, if all of the matter in the universe were simply crammed into one location and was unaffected by anything other than random happenings at the subatomic level, it indeed seems unlikely that anything coherent would emerge.  Unfortunately, this argument hinges on completely random behavior for all the contents of the universe. 

The fact is that there’s a guiding “hand” in creating the universe from the “soup” of matter that emerged from the putative “big bang”.  But that hand need not be some conscious being that happens to look like a human being but is actually an infinitely capable deity.  The universe’s organization is not completely at the mercy of randomness, and hence, the “calculations” (Most believer apologists haven’t a clue how to estimate probabilities, of course, so they don’t offer any such calculations at all!) must account for non-random processes. In the real universe, the behavior of matter and energy isn't completely random and self-organizing processes go on all the time, but believers for the most part seem not to know anything about that.  For example, the weather self-organizes into storms, rather than being just a chaotic foam of random fluctuations.

For a general audience, I can’t go into too much detail without resorting to mathematical concepts, but the laws of the natural world are generally nonlinear, which makes predicting the evolution of matter from one state to the next rather challenging – weather forecasting is a perfect example of this.  All the natural laws are fundamentally nonlinear because any linear process goes on in a straight line for infinite time.  The equations used to describe atmospheric motion are “deterministic”: for a given set of initial conditions, they make a clear and unambiguous prediction for a future state.  Unfortunately, even a tiny change in the initial conditions (which can’t be known with infinite accuracy) can result in a large change in the predicted future state.  This is why the weather is notoriously difficult to predict far into the future.

The same principle applies to ‘hindcasting” – that is, the task of running the equations backward from some point to try to deduce conditions at an earlier time.  Thus, we can’t simply take things as we know them at present and run the clock backward to calculate what conditions were 15 billion years ago when the universe began.  The laws of nature, however imperfectly we understand them at the moment, describe what amounts to a deterministic control over the natural world, but we can’t employ those laws to account for everything that went on during the last 15 billion years.  All we know is that the development of the universe from the primordial ‘soup’ was distinctly not random.  Matter condensed from pure energy as the universe expanded.  Under the influence of gravity, matter collected into clouds and some of them collapsed to form stars.  Star groups became galaxies under the influence of rotational inertia.  Planets formed within solar systems.  Somehow, life began (we don’t yet understand how) and evolved following the laws of evolution.  And so on.  It wasn’t random, but it also was unpredictable in its details.  Hence, the argument that a completely random assembling of the universe is probabilistically impossible is pretty much irrelevant – that process wasn't random!

Another logical fallacy in this argument is the assumption that we’re only concerned with the specific path by which the universe as we know it developed.  Yes, it certainly could be argued that if we could follow the exceeding large number of events that led to the present, that exact sequence would be only one amongst a very, very large number of alternative paths, the end result of each of these different paths would depart from the present to a widely-varying degree.

If we could somehow “rewind the tape” to go back to that primordial soup at some instant in the deep past, and then let the system go forward again, it would indeed be rather unlikely that all those events would ever occur in exactly the same way as it did to produce the universe we know.  But given the laws of the universe, the universe simply would evolve differently.  It's a virtual certainty that some sort of universe would evolve, but it wouldn't be an exact fit to the one we inhabit.  Our finite knowledge of the detailed disposition of all the matter and energy in the universe would be inadequate to describe its state at some moment long ago, so we could only guess at those properties of our universe at the moment it universe began 15 billion years ago.  What’s remarkable is that science has come so far in understanding these processes.  It does so by, among other things, by not postulating unnecessary supernatural interventions in that evolution.

Given the “guiding hand” of the natural laws governing the universe, something sort of resembling the present could emerge 15 billion years after rewinding the tape, but it likely wouldn’t be precisely what things are now, as we know them.  Humans might not exist, or if something humanoid was inhabiting a new Earth-like planet, they certainly wouldn’t be us.  Under the non-random processes associated with those natural laws, an exceedingly large number of distinct outcomes is still possible of course.  But the fallacy of the believer’s use of the probability argument is it's insistence that we must account quantitatively for the likelihood of the exact state of the universe as it now is known.  We can't be sure that all the possible outcomes are equally likely, but this seems like a plausible assumption, in the absence of information to the contrary.  The probability of the exact universe as we know it is indeed exceedingly small, but there's a 100% probability there would be a universe that would resemble the current one more or less, under the natural laws of the universe!  Thus, this "probability argument" fails utterly to establish a need for a deity.  I don't care what theists choose to believe in the absence of logic and compelling evidence, but their use of this argument is simply specious.

Of course, this begs the question of why the laws of the universe are as they are.  That’s an entirely different topic and theists have their usual “pat” explanation for that – again, their favorite deity is their “logical” explanation.  I’m not going to go into that one here – it can wait for another time.

Aurora, Colorado and the 2nd Amendment

The latest gun violence tragedy in Aurora, CO, has triggered yet another round of vituperative exchanges between those in favor of stronger gun controls versus those who oppose any controls on access to firearms whatsoever.  I wrote an extended essay on this topic in 2004 that represents my thoughts on the issue rather well, 8 years later.

But this recent episode prompts me to clarify some of my thoughts in that earlier essay.  To begin with, I want to promote the notion that everyone is in favor of some gun controls:  No one is advocating that we should be handing out weapons like party favors simply for the asking to children, to the criminally insane, to folks with severe mental disability, to avowed enemies of the USA and American freedoms, members of organized criminal gangs, and so on.  Even the nuttiest of gun nuts (this pejorative term does not necessarily include the vast majority of folks who own firearms!) would be aghast at the very idea of doing so.  OK - everyone wants to limit firearm access to someone, including those who want no limitations on their own personal access.

These folks fail to comprehend that their characterization of any efforts, no matter how limited, to enhance existing gun control laws as an infringement of their 2nd Amendment rights makes it easier for those very folks they agree should not have firearms to acquire them!  This comes across very clearly in this most recent example of random mass murder.  Yes, there's no doubt that someone sufficiently determined to arm themselves will do so by whatever means possible, including doing so illegally.  Gun control won't be effective against criminals, but that doesn't mean we should have virtually no gun control!!

The opponents to gun control like to characterize the debate as all or nothing:  either there should be no gun control whatsoever, or the government will be out confiscating everyone's guns!  This is the fallacy of a false dichotomy.  I have no particular dispute regarding the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, despite my personal dislike of guns.  I agree that guns don't kill on their own.  I agree that we will always have those who will become unstable and threaten society -  I just don't want them to have only limited obstacles to their obtaining murderous firepower like assault rifles.

Do you have locks on your doors and use them?  Why?  By the logic advanced by the most radical gun nuts, since there's no way to prevent a sufficiently determined thief from simply breaking in, lock or no lock, why even bother?  The fact is that a door lock is a deterrent only to the most casual potential intruder into your home.  It keeps honest people honest, despite its ineffectiveness at slowing down the "professional" intruder.

By the same token, gun controls won't deter those determined to commit mayhem with firearms.  But it will reduce the ready access to them by seemingly ordinary folks, some of whom might subsequently become extraordinary in a very murderous way.  Gun control isn't inconsistent with the 2nd Amendment - it simply is a means by which ordinary folks can remain ordinary.  Anyone who says an armed society is a good thing is seriously deluded:  an armed society is a violent society!  The evidence for this is clear from our anomalously high gun homicide frequency here in the USA.  As I've already said. everyone is in favor of some gun control, even if they selfishly want to exclude themselves from it!

The apparent ease by which the mentally unstable bozo responsible for the Aurora massacre obtained his firearms and ammunition (as well as combat armor) should be a matter of concern.  Surely there should be limitations on this easy access, and surely there should be ways to alert law enforcement about suspicious transactions involving firearms and ammunition!  Yes, it would introduce additional inconvenience for legitimate gun owners, but must we be so protective of those 2nd Amendment "rights" that there can be no serious obstacle limiting access to assault rifles, armor-piercing ammunition, and combat gear?  This guy didn't even need to lie to anyone about his intended use of this arsenal!  Evidently, only a few questions could even be asked of him because no one has the right to question the dictates of the gun lobby!!

As I indicated in my earlier essay, no sane person favors the right of ordinary people to have easy access to machine guns, hand grenades, mortars, artillery, flame throwers, nuclear missiles, vials of engineered infectious agents, chemical weapons, tanks, and so on.  These are weapons that should be limited to the military.  For some such weapons, law enforcement has a legitimate need, but even that has some limitations.  And of course, licensed collectors and firearms dealers can obtain some military-type weapons.  The issue is not that there should be limitations on gun access - the issue is where we draw the lines.  I say that assault rifles (even in semiautomatic form) and armor-piercing ammunition should not be accessible easily to just anyone.  What say you?

Political correctness - an error of the "left"

There can be no doubt I'm no fan of "political correctness" - defined as:

     noun - demonstrating progressive ideals, esp. by avoiding vocabulary 
     that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental, esp.  
     concerning race and gender

Although I support without reservation the efforts by racial minorities and women (among others) in the USA to achieve true equality under the law and in actual practice, I'm a firm believer in the exercise of my right to free speech.  The idea that mere words can on their own cause damage to such a cause is absurd to me.  Words are only words, and they easily can be distinguished from, say, physical violence.  If I choose to use offensive words like nigger, spick, raghead, blanket-ass, camel-jock, beaner, wop, kike, chink, or cunt, the people who fit those words have a clear choice:  to be offended or not.  In other words, you can only be offended by mere words if you choose to be.   I don't see that as my problem - it's yours, pure and simple.
  
It's supposedly "progressive" - a concept associated with left-leaning social views - to choose voluntarily not to use such offensive language, at the very least in the presence of those who might be offended by such words.  In my personal perspective, I don't see such voluntary muzzling of my word choices as progressive at all.  I consider any such attempt to convince me to censor myself to be a violation of my Constitutional right to free speech.  No one can argue that I've been responsible for limiting their opportunities to succeed in life by using such words.  No one can argue that my use of such words has caused them any physical harm.  Psychological harm caused by the use of such words is completely a choice on their part.  I have no intention to hurt anyone by such words - epithets exist in our real-world lexicon and I see no compelling reason to avoid using them!

I certainly recognize the power of "mere words" of course.  I'd like to believe that my use of mere words can be persuasive in influencing how people think, or more relevantly, to stimulate people to think for themselves.  I have absolutely zero interest in using the power of "mere words" to sway large numbers of a population to follow my ideas like mindless sheep, however.  The fact that certain words I use might be offensive doesn't mean that my intention in using them is to harm anyone.  Rather, I like to use politically incorrect words for their shock value.  They can jolt an otherwise somnambulant audience to attention.  Their incongruity in certain contexts has that capacity.  It seems delightfully inconsistent with what many people choose to label me with - a "liberal" persona. 

I personally can't imagine being offended by some epithet that conceivably could be used to describe me. Hence, I have trouble imagining why people would be offended by my word choices.   Elsewhere, I've told the story of a good friend who happens to be an African-American (the currently politically-correct description).  He called me a "honky" and I called him a "nigger" and we got along just fine until circumstances forced our separation.  In the era of political correctness, several media divas have run afoul of this trend toward political correctness, even losing their jobs by the mere use of certain words felt to be offensive to someone.

As I see it, political correctness is a massive load of shit, and the left-leaning "progressives" are responsible for its introduction and spread in our society.  If I want to call a spade a spade, am I not to do so because said spade might be offended?  Who said we all have a right not to be offended?  Funny, I just don't see that in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution.

If what I say offends you, you have the right to call me an asshole or whatever else might come to mind.  You also have the right to pay me no mind whatsoever.  You can conclude I'm an insensitive prick, or even a stupid bigot (despite the falsity of such a conclusion).  If I'm a bigot, I'm an equal opportunity bigot!  I'm equally willing to offend anyone, without regard to race, religion, or gender.  But please, please don't ask me to avoid certain words, simply because you choose to be offended by them.

Personally, what offends me are not words, but things like wars where we kill and maim innocent civilians for the sake of keeping the oil flowing to our society.  I'm offended by massive defense budgets seen as sacred cows even as we slash at social programs aimed at helping people through difficult times.  I'm offended by a "war on drugs" that persecutes people for victimless crimes.  I'm offended by welfare for the rich even as we restrict welfare for the poor.  I'm offended by persistent prejudicial practices in our society that limit the opportunities available to racial minorities and women.  

When I compare the impact of mere words to those offensive aspects of modern America, the notion of "political correctness" fades to insignificance.  If you live in a world where your opportunities are blocked at every turn by malicious people, who really cares what name they use to describe you?  Is that really important?  I just don't think it's worth the attention.  Let's just drop it!

Domesticated livestock versus feedlots

On a recent vacation, we encountered the usual feedlots on the western plains of the USA - such encounters are always unpleasant when the wind blows the stench toward the road by which we're passing.  This year, on our vacation we saw a sheep confinement feedlot for the first time!  A distinctly different smell from a bovince feedlot, but still a horribly obnoxious odor.  There are cattle, sheep, swine, and chicken confinement facilities around the nation, as well as the possibility of other species.  All of them strike me as the animal equivalent of Auschwitz for the creatures so confined, forced to live and lie down within their own excretions.  The smell is a clear alarm bell for anyone not numb to the unpleasantness of these facilities - the alarm is for an ecological disaster underway, a scream from the environment:  "What's happening here is terribly wrong!" There have been recent occasions where ponds holding the concentrated excretions of thousands of creatures have been overrun by flood waters, dumping the contents over the surrounding lands and into the rivers and streams.  Imagine that in your backyard!

I often hear from locals that the foul miasma coming from confinement facilities for livestock is "the smell of money" - I disagree strongly with that statement.  I believe it's the smell of greed and an environmental disaster underway.  Humans can get used to almost anything, as demonstrated by those living around Auschwitz.  In order to pack on the pounds for market and survive the experience long enough to make it to marked, the creatures are treated with various chemicals such as growth hormones (for obvious reasons) and antibiotics (to mitigate the threat of disease in the otherwise disease-friendly environment of decomposing excrement).  Such chemicals subsequently arrive in our homes neatly packaged in plastic-wrapped styrofoam packages from our local megamarkets, with no external indication of the "extra" content they're carrying, beyond the meat's nutritive value.

I spent my summers as a boy on a farm in western Illinois - I know where food comes from.  I don't think I'm an urban bleeding heart when it comes to using livestock to feed humans.  I have no problem with it as a matter of principle, although the way meat is produced today isn't ecologically sustainable.  During my boyhood days, the way that farm was operated was what we would call "organic" today - no herbicides, no pesticides, no chemicals unless an animal was sick enough to be treated by a vet.  Yes, when manure accumulated in the barns during the time the livestock overwintered in a sheltering barn, it smelled bad as it was scooped out to be dumped on the fields in the spring.  But it was soon plowed into the soil and provided organic fertilizer for the crops.  This was the first time I encountered that awful smell, and I found myself wondering about the process, even then.  Did the animals find it unpleasant when forced to lie down in straw redolent with their own decomposing shit and piss?  I still don't know, of course, but it hardly seems possible they would choose so, if offered the choice.

Cattle feedlots are designed to pack on poundage (fat) to increase the profit and to put that marbling of fat into the beef that Americans (and others around the world) so enjoy.  The cattle so confined likely spent the early months of their lives in pastures, roaming about and feeding on grass as they were weaned from their mother's milk, but are switched to a diet of corn and chemicals in the feedlot, to bulk up before going to market to be slaughtered.  They must have some sense of an awful change in their quality of life.

Unless I'm mistaken, the livestock taken from the farm where I spent my summers did not go to feedlots, but rather directly to the slaughterhouse.  Thus, in today's terminology, the meat they provided would be called "free-range" and would command a high price.  Back then, that just was the way it was done.

I eat meat from livestock all the time.  I'm no sentimentalist when it comes to that.  But confinement facilities are clearly cruel and cause a cocktail of chemicals to arrive on our dinner plates when we consume meat and eggs coming from them.  They're an open, festering, pustulating sore on the ecological landscape and are virtually certain to contribute to health problems for the consumers of the meat and eggs passing through confinement facilities.  Do we really want this?  I know I don't, and my feelings about that are reinforced every time I pass a feedlot!

Let's see now ...

Let me try to get this stuff straight:

1.  God is all-powerful enough to create the universe but he needs my money for some reason.
2.  God is all-powerful enough to create the universe but he requires the very beings he created to worship and adore him.  In fact, that need is so strong that he'll cause any non-worshippers (his creations, too!) to spend an eternity in pain and torment.
3.  God gave us a brain with which we can pursue knowledge though the use of logic and evidence, but requires us to accept his word about things without thinking, to the extent that seeking insight from the tree of knowledge is considered evil enough to condemn every generation of humans for all time with that sin committed by the very first humans.
4.  God loves all his creations but is evidently willing to send them to eternal torment for various reasons, especially not believing in him and following his rules.
5.  God is a jealous god (even though jealousy in humans at least is known to spring from a lack of self-confidence and trust), despite his infinite power, knowledge, wisdom, and benevolence.
6.  God can become angry easily - so angry, in fact, he once wiped out nearly all life on the planet - just because his creations did what he himself created and empowered them to do.
7.  God evidently creates all homosexuals (since they can't reproduce on their own) but then says that homosexuals are evil and should be killed.  And the point of creating them in the first place was ... ?
8.  God is in an eternal battle with one of his own angels, but is apparently waiting for the right time to put an end to a conflict that's causing untold numbers of human casualties in the meantime, even though he's infinitely powerful.
9.  God sent his own son to die for the sins of all humans (even newborns), but it wasn't actually his son - instead it was himself in human form and he often had conversations with himself until he caused the son-form to be killed by humans - but not really - before rising from the dead so he could sit side-by-side with himself (which also includes a ghostly form) in paradise.
10.  God created everything out of nothing.
11.  God made women just to be companions to men and to do anything their man told them to do.
12.  God is o.k. with slavery - just follow certain rules and it's no problem enslaving others.
13.  God is o.k. with genocide - again, follow certain rules and you'll be fine.
14.  God apparently gave us pretty limited brainpower compared to him, so we can't possibly understand why he allows pain and anguish to be visited upon us for no apparent reason.
15.  God is all-powerful and knows everything (past, present, and future) - so he must know what we mere humans are going to do and in fact must have created us to do whatever we are destined to do - but somehow in there, we're supposed to have free will.
16.   God designed a perfect universe just for human beings - but put a sun in the sky that can cause us to develop cancer, produces all sorts of natural disasters, and pits one tribe of humans against another to the point they go to war and slaughter each other.
17.  God knows everything about us, including all our deepest thoughts and subconscious desires, but demands we go to his place of worship and swear oaths of loyalty to him over and over at least weekly for our entire lives.
18.  God grants mercy and forgiveness - so much so that no matter how violent and malevolent one's deeds, if you become a believer at the very end of your life, every misdeed is instantly forgiven and he's fine with you living forever in joy and happiness (alongside the victims of your violence, but they'll be there only if they're smart enough to believe in him, too).
19.  God created a universe so large, its size is beyond human comprehension and there's very little chance we'll ever be able to visit more than a tiny part of that vastness, just for us on one tiny planet.  Apparently, we have a lot of lebensraum, although almost all of it is utterly hostile to human life.
20.  God created humans in his own image, but humans encompass a vast diversity of physical traits, leaving it pretty ambiguous which of us is truly in his image.

I may add more as thoughts occur to me ...

Small-town America isn't dead yet!

A few days ago, circumstances beyond our control (a broken water pump) forced us to spend a few days in the small town of Malta, MT.  We'd broken down July 2 (Tuesday) on highway 191, and limped into town late in the day, but the garage was booked up for July 3, and of course July 4 was Independence Day ... so it couldn't be fixed before the morning of July 5.  We had little choice but to stay, without transportation.  Fortunately, the motel where we stayed was able to give us the room for 3 nights in a row and it was close to the town center.

A short walk away was the Great Northern Hotel Restaurant and a bit farther away was the Westside Restaurant - coincidentally, we had had lunch at the Westside on our trip westward a few days earlier and had enjoyed the hospitality and good fare already.  The salad bar at the Westside was quite good, so if you're there, be sure to take advantage of it.  And the food at the GN was uniformly excellent, plus their "glass of wine" was quite generous, which naturally was an endearing characteristic for me!  Plus, the Maltana motel where we were staying gave us complimentary beverage tickets at GN!!

This mandatory time spent in a small town reinforced my feelings about small towns in the American Plains that spring from my time spent with relatives on a farm in northwestern Illinois:  the people are wonderful!  In this blog, I suppose a disproportionate fraction of my writing is negative - I'm upset about something and so I write about it.  But I'm not a fundamentally negative person, despite what some might conclude from my blog.  One aspect of storm chasing I've always enjoyed has been, and continues to be, small-town America.  I can think of only a tiny number of bad experiences in small towns - the overwhelming hospitality and friendliness of people in small towns dominates.  I could provide many, many examples from past storm chases.  Interesting local museums and parks, unexpected hospitality, great meals, and wonderful human interactions with total strangers!

Our chase trip hasn't had much in the way of storms this year, but we've definitely been enjoying our travels anyway.  In Malta, during our days of enforced leisure, we did some laundry, bought groceries, surfed the Web in the motel room, and were treated to a delightful fireworks display put on by the town a short distance from our motel.  We had a front row "seat" in the motel parking lot and the fireworks went on for about an hour!  Not the sort of elaborate display some towns (like Norman, OK) put on, but many diverse and spectacular fireworks that continued for a long time.  We enjoyed it a lot!

The USA has many challenging problems, but the one thing that constantly strikes me when I travel about our nation is the warmth and easygoing friendship shown to transient strangers.  I think Americans still have a core of goodness and decency that shows up constantly.  I may not like everything going on in America, but I think America is a great place at its core.

By the way, the work done on our car put us back on the road by about 1:30 pm on 5 July, with everything working just fine and a reasonable bill for the effort.  Pete was our mechanic and he was very apologetic about not being able to do anything until 5 July!  He was right there bright and early Thursday morning to do the work and the bill turned out to be less than I feared.  All in all, it was a good outcome to what might have been a nightmare, save for the good folks of Malta, MT.  If you're traveling through Malta and have the chance, stop in at the Great Northern or the Westside and have a meal.  It's quite likely to be excellent and you can enjoy a chat with the friendly wait staff at either place. 

They don't call it the "heartland of America" for nothing!

Absurd fear of an apocalypse in 2012

I watched a TV program about the supposed apocalypse coming in 2012.  It seems to have spawned a whole industry of folks seeking to make a profit from the absurd notion that the world will suffer some sort of horrible destruction in December of 2012.  There are all sorts of money-making schemes out there, hoping to encourage frightened people to waste their cash on survival items for a non-existent threat.

This sort of scam is particularly annoying to me because we're having so much trouble convincing people to prepare for the legitimate natural hazards associated with our world and the cosmos in which it's embedded.  No matter what cockamamie idea crops up - the end of the Mayan calendar being the end of the world, massive solar storms causing the Earth's rotation to be reversed (!?!?), rogue planets about to knock the Earth out of its orbit, and so on and on - there seem to be millions of people ready to seize upon this sort of  nonsense to feed some sort of primal paranoia.

During the show, it was darkly amusing to see a NASA scientist doing his best to dismiss these nightmares as utter balderdash.  He was having trouble keeping his composure because of the extreme stupidity of the questions being asked of him.  [I can relate to that, which is one of many reasons I don't do interviews for TV documentaries any more.]  His attempts at introducing real science into the program were swept aside in a tsunami of bullshit, to be drowned in an ocean of nonsense.  His few soundbites were the only moments of sanity in a torrent of content that either supported the insanity or at least did nothing to refute it.  Typical "balanced" media reporting!!

We have many legitimate reasons to be concerned about our future.  The world is not a benign place - nor is it malevolent.  Real natural processes on Earth are simply indifferent to humans.  Tumultuous events happen not as divine retribution for our failings, nor as the malevolent works of some sort of evil spirit.  From time to time, some of us will be devastated by natural hazards simply by being unlucky enough to be in their path.  Science tells us these things have happened in the past and they will happen again!

As a scientist, it's clear that more disasters await us in the future:  major tornado outbreaks, landfalling tropical cyclones, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunamis caused by landslides, incoming asteroids and comets, anthropogenic global warming and so on.  The fiscal support for science to help us understand (thereby helping us to prepare for) these disasters is being eroded in our challenging economic times, even as millions are "preparing" by spending their hard-earned money for protection from disasters for which no solid evidence exists!  Where we put our money says a lot about who we are, actually.  And seeing a program describing the investment by people in preparation for a mythical disaster is discouraging.

It seems America is sliding down a path toward discrediting legitimate science and simultaneously moving toward belief in mythology, and other forms of nonsense unsupported by any historical or physical evidence.  Perhaps this trend toward disbelief in science, combined with a rising belief in pseudo-science and outright ridiculous bullshit is part of an explanation for why we can't get people to do much to prepare for the real natural hazards that threaten us.

Selective use of evidence

One fascinating aspect of moderate christian apologists is that many of them like to cite "evidence" in support of their beliefs.  One line of such an argument on behalf of christianity is that all the evidence needed is their bible - if the bible says something, then since the bible is a sacred document, then everything it says must be true!  What more evidence would one need?  Apart from the obviously ciruclar argument fallacy, I, for one, consider that such "evidence" amounts to no evidence at all.  The bible is laced with internal contradictions, a lot of historical accounts for which there's absolutely no historical record, a host of ideas about the natural world that are precisely what one would expect from a late Bronze Age set of myths, and so on.  I see no reason to accept anything therein that is not corroborated by some other source of evidence!  Some of my apologist friends, nevertheless, stubbornly maintain that it's evidence.  They go to great lengths to rationalize the bible's contradictions and cast aspersions on scholars who have provided evidence that much of the "history" of the bible is pure fabrication.

Another element of this christian "evidence" is the pseudoscience of creationism.  Anyone who subscribes to creationism in any of its various guises is willfully accepting interpretations of various facts that have been twisted to fit the intellectually barren "hypothesis" of divine creation according to the mythology of their bible.  It's not science - it's religion, pure and simple.  I'm constantly amazed at the bizarre misinterpretations and misunderstanding of science used to rationalize creationism.  Nevertheless, there's a whole cottage industry fabricating such "evidence" to bolster creationism.  And this elaborate collection of pseudoscience seems to be working for many people, given the disturbingly widespread rejection of evolution in favor of creationism in the USA.

Yet another "argument" is that one need only look to the natural world to see vast evidence supporting the deity.  How could I overlook the daily miracles going on in the world around me?  Well ... for starters, I have a rather high standard for what I'm willing to accept as a miracle!  Everyday life just doesn't measure up to biblical miracles that conveniently ceased 2000 years ago, for no obvious reason.  Routine existence is pretty far from supernatural occurrences commanded by a deity.

But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this is that believers would even attempt to offer any evidence whatsoever!  If one is supposed to accept the reality of the bible and its deity on faith - that is, belief in the absence of evidence - then what possible reason do apologists have for trying to manufacture evidence (where none exists)?  If faith is enough, why call upon evidence at all?  This strikes me as a clear implicit admission of their lack of faith, actually! 

However, if you challenge their evidence, one of two things typically happens:

1.  They ignore your challenges to their evidence and maintain that their evidence is valid no matter what you say.  This is, of course, the sign of a completely closed mind, suffering from intense confirmation bias (the universal human tendency to accept uncritically any evidence no matter how flimsy that confirms what we already believe and to question any evidence no matter how substantive that challenges what we believe).

2.  They fall back on faith and argue that faith always trumps any evidence, pro or con.  And it always does, of course.  Whenever you choose to accept an idea without any evidence, then there can be no possible rational argument that will dissuade you.  This is why faith is so dangerous, actually.

To me, the fundamentalists who rely entirely on faith are at least being consistent in their position.  They're not dancing with evidence when it suits them and rejecting evidence when it doesn't.  Although such a position in the modern world flies in the face of all that being rational has given us, they're steadfast in their lack of interest in rational arguments.  It's a lot easier for me to understand fundamentalists than it is for me to understand people who accept the principles of logic and evidence in most of their activities but in their spiritual life, they stubbornly cling to some bizarre belief system for which there's no meaningful evidence.  The capacity of the human mind to rationalize is truly amazing!

Freethinking demands credible, repeatable, independent evidence.  No hypothesis based on belief in the absence of evidence is acceptable.  Science recognizes the distinction between ideas for which credible evidence exists, and ideas that presently are beyond our capability to validate.  The latter are considered "speculation" and while there may be good logical reasoning behind these ideas, without evidence to support them, they remain outside of the domain of science.  Science knows its limitations - religion accepts no limits to its "knowledge".

Why is there no substantive NWS training?

I've been an advocate for serious training of its forecasters by the National Weather Service (NWS) for what amounts to my entire career ... with essentially zero progress.  I watched a TV program about military training for snipers recently and was astonished at their methods ... the trainers are all experienced snipers themselves, new tactics are constantly being incorporated in response to changing conditions in real-world battle conditions, the trainers go back in the field after time spent in the sniper training program.  This TV program reminded me of the pitiful state of training in the NWS, and reveals a training process for military snipers that reflects many aspects of a proposal of mine I posted some years ago.  Please read my proposal before continuing ...

I've been told that my proposal is impractical and unaffordable - that is, I'm unrealistic.  Let me ask in response: how realistic is it to offer no meaningful forecaster training to new employees?  How realistic is it to have no continuing education and training program for weather forecasters?  How realistic is it to have no certification process by which forecasters demonstrate their competence periodically in order to continue doing their jobs?  How realistic is it to pour hundreds of millions into new forecasting technology and next to nothing into the people who use that technology?  How realistic is it to assume that four years of undergraduate meteorology provides all you'll ever need to know to do the most challenging job in all of meteorology? From where I sit, it's not I who is being unrealistic!

The human component of the NWS is the single largest budget item for the agency.  The science and technology behind automated, "objective" weather forecasting has been underwritten by hundreds of millions for decades and is ongoing today.  Yet, to this day, the NWS invests only marginally in training and so, for example, we have no idea what it takes to be a good weather forecaster, because that involves learning about people, not about differential equations and computer code.  We meteorologists learn math and physics in school - that's education.  We can argue about how good our meteorology education is, but I know for a fact that at the end of a four year undergraduate program, new graduates still don't know very much about the atmosphere and how it really works.  For myself, it was well into my doctoral studies before I began to obtain a dim understanding of processes in the atmosphere.  Nearly forty years later, I'm still learning, of course!

Training is about how to take the principles you learned via education and apply those principles to a specific job.  In our case, for the most part universities don't train their students how to forecast.
Although a few university professors might do a decent job of instilling the principles of atmospheric science (i.e., educating them), most of them don't do a decent job.  And when their graduates go to work as weather forecasters, how do they learn how to forecast?  See here, as well.  For the most part, it's up to them to learn it on their own.  A few lucky ones might be given the chance to learn from a competent mentor.

What training that the NWS provides is dominated today by "distance learning" - self-study modules on specific topics.  There's precious little face-to-face training of the sort described in my proposal.  Many of the people creating these training modules are good folks, doing the best they can, but it's like bailing out the Pacific with a thimble.  The few in-residence courses are pretty decent, but far too little and too infrequent to be of much enduring value.

It's unconscionable that a bloated NWS bureaucracy continues their incompetent management, even as they shortchange training programs for their forecasters.  NWS management is under investigation currently (spring 2012) from Congress for misappropriating funds ... and it's coming to light how they've allowed their agency to become seriously underfunded over the past several decades.  I wouldn't mind seeing a clean sweep of NWS managers, and a major reduction in the bureaucracy (including NWS Headquarters and elimination of the regional bureaucracies altogether).  There's a lot of fat in the NWS budget, mostly comprising fatheads trying unsuccessfully to manage the system!

Maybe some of the money saved by a drastic reduction of the NWS bureaucracy could be used to develop a meaningful training process in the NWS for the first time in its history.

Communist atrocities

Often, religious believer apologists take umbrage at the point that many atheists make about the long, bloody history of religions.  They particularly like to bring up the point that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and other Communists were atheists, and they're at the top of the list of history's mass murderers.  Hitler was raised a catholic and Nazi propaganda shows a continuing thread of christian bias  throughout his Third Reich's rule - the case for him being an atheist is at least arguable and seems pretty thin to me.  His virulent hatred of jews was shared by many christians under his rule, unfortunately.  Communist tyrants, on the other hand, vigorously replaced whatever religious upbringing their people once may have supported with orthodox Communist ideology.  Communists brook no rivals for dominance!  In fact, a while back, I posted a blog about the parallels between religion and despots of all flavors.

The atrocities committed by Communist regimes were not committed in the name of atheism, however.  Atheism simply was dragged along for the ride.  The nominal justification for these atrocities was always in the name of social "justice" via Communism:  "We were justified in these extreme measures because of the necessity to ensure the eventual triumph of the  'dictatorship of the proletariat.' "  Of course, it was precisely the working classes that were the victims of these horrific deeds, but this essay is not the place to go into details regarding the various Communist tyrannies.

Although the nominal excuse was Communist ideology, the real reason for brutal repression of their own people was that these outlaw regimes were mainly interested in the utter destruction of any opposition to the Communist tyrants.  The ideological slogans and rationalizations served to mask the reality that this was all about total power over the people.  Communist regimes have been linked to atheism, unfortunately, so atheists constantly have to explain how nominal atheists could be responsible for such evil deeds.

Human existence is plagued with vast numbers of instances of abuse of power.  It seems an inescapable penalty we pay for our human societies.  Power always corrupts.  Political ideology occasionally has superceded religion as the main excuse for abuse of power by totalitarian regimes, but it seems that religion and politics often make ready bedfellows - for instance, the catholic church did little or nothing to oppose Nazi war crimes, which seems to imply that they had struck some sort of deal with the Nazis.  They even aided in the escape of some of those war criminals from Germany at the end of WWII!

The orthodox church in Russia could make no such deal with the Bolsheviks (Communists) and suffered intense repression as a result.  This is an exception to the rule - and the orthodox church had no problem looking the other way regarding the brutality of the tsars.  Both politics and religion are about dominance over and control of people's lives, so they can have a mutual understanding.  The words politicians and religious leaders use when they attain dominance are quite similar, their actions are also similar, and the results are unsurprisingly similar.  We are today in the midst of a religious war pitting islam against judaism and christianity.  The rhetoric of all sides is disturbingly similar, the "sacred texts" of all sides are essentially calling for the same thing:  convert or die, and some of their adherents are willing to kill (and die) for the faith!

The argument that atheism must share equally with religion the burden of guilt for crimes against humanity is fallacious.  Apart from the Communist regimes, atheists generally have been minorities throughout world history.  Atheists under the "banner" of atheism have never been in control of a nation!  Some atheists have been in positions of power but often had to stay "in the closet" to attain those positions.  In Communist regimes, everyone was forced into atheism, whether or not they actually were atheists!

I know of no atrocities committed on a large scale in the name of the non-religion of atheism.  No doubt some percentage of rapists, murderers, pedophiles, and psychopaths are atheists - probably a percentage that's below their percentage within the local populations, but non-zero nevertheless.  That Communist atheists have done their share of senseless slaughter can only be extrapolated to atheists in general by means of the specious assertion that the Communists did these things to advance the cause of atheism.  This is an example of the the logical fallacy of a false eqivalence - Communist atrocities against their own people are not the equivalent of the atrocities done in the name of religion.  And even if they were, the transgressions of some atheists don't justify the evils perpetrated in the name of religion.

Consider the religious jihads and crusades in our history (and still going on at present).  It's quite evident that the spread of those religions at the point of a sword/gun is precisely what they've been (and still are) all about!  The slaughter, the torture, the terror, the enslavement is all designed to make unbelievers into "believers" (or corpses).  No organized activity of atheists, as atheists, has ever engaged in such abominable acts.  I challenge anyone to provide any example that doesn't exploit the connection between Communist ideology and atheism!

Who is this for?

As I contemplate writing this tribute, I can't seem to figure out to whom it's dedicated.  I just watched a recorded version of a program about the blues, hosted by Morgan Freeman (one of my favorite actors).  What it brings to mind is a night that will live in my memory so long as I retain the ability to recall things - a night spent at Buddy Guy's club in Chicago.  We had been there to participate in the annual program about storms, storm chasing, and storm spotting put on by my friend Paul Sirvatka from the College of Dupage.  I go to this whenever Paul invites me because - because I grew up there, because Paul is my friend, and because the blues clubs in Chicago are second to none.

Buddy Guy, performing.  I've been to a few concerts where he was playing and despite his age, he still performs with enormous energy and enjoys interacting with people in the audience.

We had gone to Buddy Guy's club Legends because (a) I absolutely think Buddy Guy is fantastic, (b) Coco Montoya was playing there that night, and (c) what more do I need to say?  It was a great night and I was with my friend Al Moller, who has been a huge influence on me in so many ways, including my love for the blues.  The warmup act was - mediocre - and they had finished playing but the headline act (Coco Montoya), was not yet onstage.

I don't recall the details, but suddenly, I hear Al calling me.  "Chuck, come here!  It's fucking Buddy Guy!"  I needed no further motivation.  I went to where he was yelling, and lo and behold, it was indeed Buddy Guy!  I felt like a stupid kid - just what do you say to someone who is truly a living legend?  I mumbled something about loving his work - no doubt it was pathetic - and shook the hand of the great man.  I don't even recall what he said, but I'm sure it was something nice.  I've been in a somewhat similar position and the adoration is kind of embarrassing.  But I just couldn't help myself.  I was just another of his many adoring fans.

I remember asking him if he was going to perform.  No, he said, but he was looking forward to Coco Montoya's performance.   And indeed it wound up being a memorable performance.  There's nothing like the relationship between a great blues musician and his audience!  You just can't capture that in a studio.

I enjoyed this TV presentation of the blues, though it was the usual TV treatment:  mostly superficial and far less that what the topic deserves.  The blues is a great, uniquely American idiom, contributed by the African-American segment of our population and largely unrecognized and unappreciated by white America until the British re-introduced it to us in the 1960s.  The blues musicians were exploited by the music industry.  It's only lately that we've discovered the geniuses in our midst and given them some small recognition for the immensity of their contributions.  No doubt racism is at the heart of this long-delayed recognition, but the fact that people are now willing to accept the importance of the blues in our musical world is at least an encouraging sign of the eventual demise of the scourge of racism.

But seeing Buddy Guy in this TV program made me think of my friend, Al Moller, as well.  In many ways, my long friendship with Al puts me in a better position than I was in with Buddy Guy that night.  I've known Al since 1972, and we have had many adventures together, as well as many shared experiences (not limited to storm chasing!).  I feel more comfortable around Al.  I have the benefit of those years of friendship with a great man.

I wonder what it might be like to be Buddy Guy's long-time friend.  Alas, that's something I'll never be able to know.  What sort of person would I think Buddy Guy is?  If I judge by his music, I think we could be friends - but how meaningful is my response to his music?  Is his creative work indicative of what sort of person he is?  When it comes to it, does my professional work indicate what sort of person I am?  When I think about the work of Al Moller, I see him and his professional work inexorably intertwined.  I see the connections between Al the man, and Al the professional weather forecaster.  I know of the passion that drove his work and which manifested itself in so many ways in his life, including his incredible photography.  I see those connections because I've known Al for so long.

This all forces me to believe that if I had been Buddy Guy's friend for as long as I've known Al, I think his work reflects his passions in a similar way.  Ultimately, we may share that connection, whether we are close friends or not.  Is this essay about Al Moller, or is it about Buddy Guy?  Or is it simply another piece in my lifelong struggle to understand myself?  Sorry - I can't answer that.  But I'm grateful for my friends, and I'm grateful for the joy music gives me.

Proselytizing for atheism?

Many people seem to think that as an atheist, I believe it's my duty to convert everyone to disbelief in a deity.  My believer friends assume I'm trying to convert them, and some of my atheist friends consider it an important part of a supposed campaign to stamp out religion.  But I reject this notion utterly.  I'm not proselytizing for atheism at all!

Make no mistake - especially when it concerns the abrahamic religions (christianity, judaism, and islam), I consider religion to be a pernicious influence on our society without which we'd definitely be better off.  But I also know that trying to change the strongly-held beliefs of believers is mostly a waste of my time. Believers interpret things through the lens of "confirmation bias" whereby they see everything as confirming their beliefs and disputing anything that threatens those beliefs.  If I propose rational arguments against those beliefs, they'll not only not be convinced by anything I might have to offer on behalf of my disbelief, but some might accuse me to trying to convert them, thus confirming their erroneous assertion that atheism is just another belief system, despite the logical situation that disbelief cannot be a belief!

If I thought rational arguments would be effective in converting believers to unbelief, I likely would follow that path, because in my opinion, religions are a system with more downside than upside for our modern societies.  But instead, here's where I'm coming from:  I know it's unlikely I can get you to toss aside your comforting delusions and myths, so I'm not going to try.  In fact, I support fully your right in these secular United States to believe in whatever you choose.  All I ask in return is that you do the same, and not force your beliefs on atheists and other nonchristian believers by inserting religious doctrine into public institutions.   Is that asking so much?  Apparently, it is - some believers see any opposition to putting "In god we trust" on our currency, or to affirming that our nation is "under god" in the pledge of allegiance as an infringement on their religious freedom.  This is such a monumentally illogical argument, it's hard to know even where to begin to refute it. 

Some of my believer friends tell me to just ignore the intrusions of religious doctrine, if it bothers me.  It's just so many words by which I should not be offended.  Or they say, contrary to the reality of history, that the US is founded on religious principles, which couldn't be farther from the truth, but they have bought into revisionist history by which everything is given a religious spin by those who would distort truth in order to carry out a religious agenda that seeks "dominion" - that is, to impose a christian theocracy on the US through the ballot box.  Or they say it's their right to do so because they represent the majority of Americans.  They would seek to impose the tyranny of the majority on all other believers (not of their ilk) and on nonbelievers as well.  If need be, they will toss the Bill of Rights aside in their drive to christian dominionism.

I speak out against the activities by christian dominionists that would increase the penetration of christian religion in our secular nation.  I dispute the absurd illogic that permeates the abrahamic religions because we can ill afford to sink even further into irrationality at a time when we need all the rational thinking we can muster.  We share in challenging times - believers and nonbelievers both - our economy is a mess, unemployment is rampant, the disparity between the rich and the poor is expanding even as the middle class is being pushed seemingly inexorably toward poverty, corporations are buying influence on politicians with increasing success, perpetrators of corporate crime are escaping any justice whatsoever, our civil rights are being trampled upon in the name of the illusion of security against our putative external enemies (shades of 1984), people increasingly are rejecting science in favor of religious myths, and our education system has been pushed to the brink of irrelevancy.  Freedom and liberty are being threatened on many sides and we need innovative thinking, unconstrained by irrelevant religious doctrine.  Oh yes, if I thought I could change people's minds to reject their security blanket of religious nonsense, I would certainly try.

But - it's hopeless.  Believer apologists want to portray atheism as just another belief system.  They say, without any real basis, atheism must be taken on faith because we cannot prove (in an absolute sense) that their god doesn't exist, just as their late Bronze Age religious cant must be taken on faith because it cannot prove (in an absolute sense) that their god does exist.  They say that science requires just as much faith as their religion when that is so patently counterfactual, it's hard to imagine by what twisted logic it can be asserted that science is built on faith.

I post these thoughts not in the vain hope that I will convince believers to abandon their beliefs, but to clarify that my goal is not to do so at all.  My posted thoughts are a plea for a commitment to freedom and liberty for everyone, not just the christian believers.  If there is to be any hope for a common ground upon which believers and nonbelievers can work together, it must be on this secular core represented by the principles of this secular nation as embodied in our Constitution.  If we cannot work together to achieve freedom and liberty for all, then our nation will have failed utterly to have lived up to its promising start.  We will cease to be the shining beacon of freedom we like to believe ourselves to be and will become just another fascist theocracy.

What would it take to be truly "Weather Ready" as a nation?

Having recently returned from the Weather Ready Nation Workshop in Birmingham, AL, I heard many interesting and stimulating ideas generated there.  One that I noticed in particular was the question "Just how do we define 'Weather Ready', anyway?"  I already posted a blog about the utter meaninglessness of the term "StormReady" as it is applied by the NWS.  Here at this meeting, a gathering of very qualified specialists in meteorology and many of the diverse social sciences that was charged with developing multidisciplinary research objectives to help the nation become 'Weather Ready', defining our ultimate goal is not a frivolous question!

Mulling over this question, one thing becomes clear:  our workshop was aiming almost entirely toward institutional responses to help the nation be prepared for whatever the weather will throw at them.  [Hazardous weather is far from being limited to tornadoes - it includes winter storms, heat and drought, flash floods, hurricanes, nontornadic windstorms, hailstorms, and so on.]   We spent our workshop considering multidisciplinary research needed to help institutions (e.g., the NWS, FEMA, local governments, etc.) enhance their activities in response to the threat of hazardous weather.

How close are we now to being ready as a nation?  From where I sit, I'd say we're pretty far from being ready.  I'll expand on that shortly.  Having said this, I must acknowledge that although our existing institutional responses to the threat of hazardous weather are far from perfect, they are much more successful than a superficial examination might reveal.  We really don't know quantitatively (especially in $$ but also in terms of lives) the extent to which the existing systems have saved our nation from disasters.  What we do know is that weather disasters are happening more frequently, and it seems evident that our vulnerability to the weather has been increasing, not decreasing.  A growing population at risk from the weather is manifested in the dollar damage figures (which I admit are only a crude measure of the economic impact of weather).

The institutional responses can and should be reviewed and revised when we know precisely how to do the revisions so as to get the best results.  But I want here to point out a heretofore under-recognized component of our readiness for weather as a nation.  We continue to have large populations living in flood-prone areas, we have large populations living in coastal areas vulnerable to hurricanes and even high-end extratropical storms, we have cities in arid locations that are increasingly struggling to find sources of fresh water, we have segments of our population in relatively warm regions who are unprepared for serious winter storms, heat waves claim lives every year, our homes are shoddily built, ready to be destroyed by the winds, and so on.  The element that is being overlooked, in my opinion, is the personal responsibility that all people living in the USA must bear if they are to prepared.

Witness the pointless "indomitable spirit" of rebuilding in areas devastated by floods.  This continues to happen not only because of the failure of our institutions to deny this foolish response, but because of the irresponsible, selfish failure of those who want to rebuild in the same location to recognize the message the weather is sending: living in this location is foolhardy!  If people want to live in such locations, despite the known dangers of doing so, they should not be allowed to insure their property, or their premiums should reflect the extreme risk to their property (and lives) that living there represents.  Developers in flood-vulnerable locations (such as "10-mile flats" in Norman, OK) need to disclose the risks to their customers or, preferably, not be allowed to develop those areas in the first place.

I've recently discussed the importance of home construction quality in the USA and how inadequate it is.  If the public demands enhanced structural integrity as opposed to fancy marble kitchen counter tops, then perhaps the construction industry will respond.  It's evident that the construction industry doesn't see it to be in their pecuniary interest to offer substantially stronger homes than they're now building.  Without a demand from the public, they'll oppose and lobby against more stringent building codes.  Homebuilders will respond to a demand from their customers, where they would not respond well to demands imposed on them from outside.  People need to understand that better-constructed homes are in their best interest if they want to be prepared for hazardous weather!

It seems to me we've seen a collective growth in the notion that the responsibility for protecting people from weather dangers is loaded entirely on institutions:  the NWS, media weather broadcasters, local government, etc.  Although these institutions certainly are responsible for some part of the effort to be prepared, all their work means nothing if people don't accept their share of the overall responsibility.

The media consistently have dropped the ball in public education, failing miserably in their obligations for public service.  The NWS has little or no capability for outreach to the public, although that's something that should be reconsidered.  For the present, therefore, the primary burden for this must be on the media.  They need to get their facts straight and begin to get an accurate message out to the public:  People must invest their own time and resources if they hope to be prepared for any hazardous weather that might happen in the future.  Throughout the year, the weather poses different potential hazards and the time for people to plan for these hazards is long before the threat becomes imminent!  Institutions should make information available to the public, but the public ultimately must think about and act upon that information for their personal preparations.  If the poisonous viewpoint persists that it's totally someone else's responsibility to protect the public from hazardous weather, we'll never achieve the status of a Weather Ready Nation!

A magic bullet for tornado warnings?

After the tragic tornado season of 2011, with nearly 600 fatalities, it's natural for some agonized re-appraisal to go on.  Some blame themselves, some blame others. But the "blame game" is pointless.  How do we explain all those fatalities, despite the fact that the National Weather Service (NWS) and the so-called Integrated Warning System (that includes media broadcasters and emergency managers, as well as storm spotters and NWS forecasters) did a pretty good job with having tornado warnings out for the deadly tornadoes?

Of late, it's become fashionable to discuss the issue of the efficacy of warnings in terms of the need to do social science-oriented research.  In fact, I've just returned from the Weather Ready Nation Workshop in Birmingham, AL where the main goal was to define research objectives for a multidisciplinary approach to the challenge posed by large death tolls in spite of reasonably timely and accurate warnings.  Hopefully, the outcome of this workshop will be a major step forward in getting the needed multidisciplinary research done.

For decades, the NWS has been focused, naturally enough, on the weather!  During most of my career, most forecasters operated under the notion that they have a forecasting task to accomplish that basically ends when they push the "send" button on their computers and their forecast products (including tornado warnings) leave the office (mostly electronically).  They've not considered it their responsibility to understand what happens when it leaves the NWS office - and it shouldn't be their job.  Weather forecasting is tough enough!  My long-time friend and colleague, retired NWS operational forecaster Alan R. Moller made me aware of the inadequacy of this situation:  even a perfect forecast is useless if the forecast information:

• Fails to reach its intended users
• Is not understood by the intended users
• Is not believed by the intended users
• Is of no value in helping intended users to make critical decisions

For the last year, there's been a lot of angst over the warning process.  What can we do to make them more effective?  What can we do to prevent any of the foregoing stumbling blocks along the path to protecting the lives of those unlucky enough to be in the path of tornadoes?  To a considerable degree, solutions to the problems depend on information about the users we presently don't have, and have only begun to obtain.  Weather forecasters aren't qualified to do the research needed for this - they know meteorology, not social science.  Partnerships between the meteorologists and the social sciences must develop as a result of mutual interest in answering the as-yet unanswered questions about what happens when the forecasters push "send".

I've long been an advocate on behalf of this research and I continue to believe we need those answers before we start meddling with the warning process.  No doubt in reaction to all the angst, the NWS recently initiated a public "experiment" in tiered warnings.  This is an ill-advised, ill-designed experiment. It "recycles" some old terminology and represents nothing particularly new. Its experimental design isn't founded on new understanding of how the public receives, understands, and uses warnings to make decisions. Moreover, it shouldn't have been carried out in a "public" mode. The ability to issue skillful tiered warnings should have been tested in a non-public, "testbed" mode before this project was undertaken - the HWT at the Norman Weather Center would have been an ideal venue for a series of internal experiments establishing the extent of forecast skill before going public. And the physical and social scientists should have been given the opportunity to review this experiment and offer recommendations before the ill-advised decision to go ahead with this was ever made.

Having said all this, I now want to throw  some cold water onto the entropy generated by all this anxiety over the warnings.  First, in my opinion, there's no magic bullet that will transform the existing warnings into something where all the challenges described above are overcome.

Is it our goal to turn the public into automatons who shuffle off like zombies to shelter every time we issue a warning?  Personally, I don't think so.  We have no business telling our forecast users what to do.  The meteorologists need to issue their warnings, but the users must make their decisions about what to do with our weather information on the basis of their own complex needs, which vary from one user to the next.  This diverse set of user needs can't be accounted for in NWS warnings and so I'm opposed to such things as call-to-action statements.  If people need to know what to do in specific situations, the time to learn that was before the threat ever materialized, not in the last few minutes before a tornado strikes.

Although the existing warning system is far from perfect, its impact on life-saving over the years has been dramatic.  I have no doubt that thousands of lives have been saved by the existing imperfect warning system.  Before we start tinkering with the warnings, we need to be as certain as possible that any proposed changes won't result in even less effective warnings than they are now!  First of all, do no harm!!

Second, it's obvious to me that mere wording changes aren't likely to have any lasting impact on the warnings.  We have to reconsider the whole process, end-to-end (to use a phrase that once was popular in NWS management circles), and make changes only on the basis of clear and compelling new findings about the warning process.  Wordsmithing is of little or no value.

Third, the existing warnings do their best with respect to the tornadoes that are most likely to take lives:  long-track violent tornadoes.  We're already doing pretty well there and the rest of the tornadoes only account for a small fraction of the fatalities.  When large, violent, long-track tornadoes hit populated areas, people will be killed.  Most of the time, tornadoes miss population concentrations here in the USA.  A comprehensive explanation for the massive death tolls in 2011 has yet to be offered, and likely involves some complex interactions among factors leading to casualties, but it's my belief that the primary "explanation" is that our luck ran out in 2011.  The threat has been there all along, but we were mostly unlucky in 2011, whereas we've mostly been lucky in the preceding decades.  This has been characteristic of tornado fatalities over time - sporadic disasters decades apart, with much lesser events dominating in between.   We need to review and consider who is being killed in deadly tornadoes and the reasons for their deaths.  I don't believe the "answer" to preventing fatalities is longer warning lead times by tornado forecasters.  As noted, we're already doing a pretty good job with most of the really deadly tornadoes, paradoxically.

What does "Storm Ready" really mean?

Many of my readers know the National Weather Service has a program called "StormReady" that gives communities "StormReady" status when they meet certain criteria.  You can read the criteria on their website.  Some recent experiences here in my community - Norman, OK - have given me reason to doubt Norman's actually readiness for storms, in spite of their having been granted this "distinguished" status.

I wrote an extended essay after a tornado developed near my home late at night in 2009.  The local sirens weren't sounded until well after the tornado began, apparently because no one was in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to push the button.  On 13 April 2012, a tornado developed just west of Norman and moved across the heart of the city, wrapped in rain.  It turned out to be a weak tornado (EF-1), fortunately.  It dissipated not far from my home.  The sirens again were not sounded until the tornado was well into the city - apparently again because no one was staffing the EOC.  Just how "storm ready" can Norman actually be if this is their track record in threatening situations?  Why was there no one already at the EOC in these situations?  Having an EOC is not very meaningful if there's no one there to operate the facility.

Sirens are not the best means of disseminating tornado warnings, but Norman recently spent a fair sum to install new sirens.  Was this the best possible way to use that money?  I think not.  Apparently, from what I heard, the mayor made that decision on her own, basically, for reasons unknown to me.  I'd like to see the general public wean themselves of their dependence on sirens as their sole means to alert them of approaching hazardous weather.  Yes, sirens might still have a useful function, but people shouldn't be accustomed to depending on them alone to obtain information about the weather.  Whatever I might think about the efficacy of sirens for tornado warnings, however, these two recent incidents seem to suggest that Norman is not so ready for storms as their resume might suggest.

What does "storm ready" really mean?  As I see it, the NWS criteria don't go nearly far enough to establish a meaningful preparedness level for communities to meet.  To be truly ready, communities need to do much more!  For example, who has reviewed and approved the tornado plans in place in the local public schools?  Have those plans been evaluated by someone independent of the school who actually has the qualifications to know what's needed?  Dr. Matt Biddle and I have done some informal snooping around in schools over the years and found several disturbing things:

1. Many schools don't have a functioning weather radio
2. The designated shelters in many of the schools I've investigated have serious problems that would endanger anyone sheltering there
3. Schools often have suitable shelter spaces that are unnecessarily unavailable for use - e.g., interior rooms filled with stored items
4. The structural integrity of school buildings is not always known, so any structural defects that could affect safety need to be identified by someone competent and those flaws fixed
5. Some of the tornado plans I've seen contain fundamental flaws that could put children and staff at risk

A similar evaluation of all the other places in a community where people gather - businesses, malls, recreational facilities, universities, private schools, hospitals, nursing homes, churches, and so on - should be undertaken.  Most of our concerns with tornadoes are focused on residences, and deservedly so, but they're not the only locations where people are at risk in a tornado.  Residential building codes should be in place that mandate enhanced structural integrity.  Families and businesses need to be encouraged to develop tornado hazard plans and to practice them at least once a year.  Public information campaigns to make the community aware of their responsibilities and resources should be routine.

In my experiences here in Norman, the politicians seemed distinctly uninterested in taking full advantage of the numerous subject matter experts in the university and the Norman Weather Center.  Similarly, it seems many of those experts have little interest in contributing to the improvement of the community's preparations for storm hazards.  That this is the case here in Norman seems incredible to me.  How can we presume to lecture to others about what to do to prepare for storms, when our own community is not a shining example of what can and should be done?  Is Norman truly storm ready?  I don't think so!  That should be an embarrassment to everyone.

The false dichotomy: Tornadoes and home construction

The widespread prevalence of mythology seems to characterize the whole subject of tornadoes and their interaction with humans.  For example, I recently wrote a blog about the myth of water tables preventing the construction of basements.  Someone recently passed on to me a "Disaster Safety Review" put out by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, that contains some fascinating material, that I'll address shortly.

However, the main issue compelling me to write this blog is a false dichotomy:  the builders and their lobbyists say that it's possible to build a tornado-proof home, but no one could afford it or even want it.  This argument presumes that the only two options available to a prospective homeowner are either (a) a tornado-proof bunker, or (b) the standard, flimsy frame home built in the USA.  That this is a false dichotomy should be evident to anyone who knows anything about construction.  It's quite possible to construct homes that would resist damage from tornadoes - that is, to some standard somewhere intermediate between (a) and (b).

As should be well-known, the hurricane-prone regions along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts have building codes that mandate homes be built with more structural integrity than is required for homes in the rest of the nation.  Essentially, outside of the coastal zones, the standard is that the home be constructed to resist structural damage in winds up to 90 mph - this is option (b), above.  In the coastal zones, the standard is up to 125 mph!  Apparently the builders are quite capable of building homes to that higher standard (assuming it's actually enforced).  Note that this higher standard does not make homes either hurricane-proof, or tornado-proof!  Their enhanced structural integrity makes them hurricane/tornado-resistant, however. Such homes can be built and apparently they're affordable!

In even a violent tornado (EF4-5), the violent damage comprises only a small percentage of the damage path.  Therefore, by far the majority of the damage path area experiences winds of EF-3 or less (currently, the bounds of EF-3 are nominally 136-165 mph).  If we had all new homes built in the USA held to the higher standard applied in the hurricane-prone regions of the US, we eventually would have far less structural damage to homes, even in violent tornadoes!  In EF-2 and weaker tornadoes, structural damage would be nearly eliminated.  Reduced structural damage would provide reduced debris loads in tornadoes, and it's well known that debris within tornadic winds makes those winds considerably more destructive!

Of course, a lot of "legacy" homes will remain for a long time that were built to the lower standard (b).  Their structural damage would still contribute debris that could affect the damage even in well-constructed homes.  Airborne debris from your neighbor's flimsy home could "reach out" and harm your home, even if your home is well constructed.  I've seen examples of this in my damage surveys - it's not enough just to have your home well-constructed!  Whole neighborhoods and, eventually, whole communities need to be well-constructed to provide the optimum safety from unnecessary damage.  This problem can't be corrected overnight, obviously, but if we do nothing to enhance building codes within the tornado-prone areas of the USA (essentially everywhere east of the Continental Divide), then we'll be plagued indefinitely with what amounts to unnecessary damage from tornadoes.

I note that in the safety review mentioned above, the states of TX, MS, and AL are rated quite low in terms of building code and enforcement.  If one were to search for reasons why tornado outbreaks in "Dixie Alley" produce so many fatalities, this might be a good place to start!

I don't know and neither does anyone else!

Today, with a "High Risk" of a major tornado outbreak in the forecast, some recent experiences prompt me to discuss a tornado-related topic that seems to be springing up everywhere, sort of like playing a game of Whac a mole.  The question is ... wait for it ... Will global climate change cause an increase in the frequency and/or intensity of tornadoes?

I recently had an extended email discussion  on this topic with a famous climate scientist after I posted a blog on the subject.  That scientist, not a specialist in severe convective weather, seems reluctant to accept the arguments of a fellow scientist who has spent 40 years studying tornadoes and tornado climatology, or to do anything to correct "misstatements of his position" on the subject in the popular media.  Whatever - I have no means to control the words/actions of others, nor do I wish to have such control.

The more time I've spent looking at our data regarding the occurrence of tornadoes, the more concerned I've become about the relationship between those data and the unknown true time-space distribution of tornadoes in the USA.  I've said on many occasions that the USA has the best data regarding tornado occurrence in the world, but our data still pretty much suck!  They're dominated by the heavy hand of non-meteorological influences:  population density, challenges to rating tornado intensity, reporting practices, politics of various sorts, and so on.  The effects of these "secular" factors only become evident as one works with the data.

It's indeed logically possible that some of the changes we see over time in the space-time distribution of tornado reports are the result of global climate change.  I certainly have no basis for ruling that out.  Unfortunately, I can't rule out the possibility that global climate change has, as yet, had no effect, either!  Given the very strong signal of a increasing tornado frequency, it seems inevitable that people examining the data for the first time would be impressed most by that very obvious trend in the data. Even a relatively sophisticated newcomer capable of using tools like statistical analysis on the data couldn't avoid being dominated by that trend.   The problem is that deeper examination of the data eventually reveals large biases that clearly have nothing to do with meteorology.

Our tornado data simply do not permit the drawing of conclusions with high confidence about possible changes in the space-time distributions of tornadoes.  No simple adjustments of the data - say, accounting for population bias - can remove the multitude of secular changes that resist being characterized easily in time and space.  Population bias is only one amongst the multitude and it's relatively easy to accommodate, whereas many of the other factors are much more difficult to account for, or even to characterize.  Given the potential significance of the effects arising from anthropogenic global warming, it's easy to understand why someone would jump on a superficial analysis of the tornado occurrence data to make unjustifiable, speculative statements about the future for tornadoes.  But the simple fact is I don't know what's going to happen and neither does anyone else!  Anyone who asserts that they do know what's going to happen with respect to future tornado occurrences has no scientific foundation upon which to stand. 

I'm not happy about this situation, but scientific integrity demands that I acknowledge it and behave accordingly.  I see little or no potential for the development of an extensive data base about tornadoes free of these secular influences any time in the next several decades.  I know of no way to obtain highly accurate data that would reveal the true space-time distribution of tornadoes.  Even if some such solution did exist, we would have to use it for many decades to develop a sufficient sample of events to justify making confident statements about temporal changes in the space-time tornado distribution.

Therefore, this problem isn't going away any time soon, barring some sort of unforeseen new developments in the climatological analysis of tornado occurrence data.  Absent highly reliable information about that true distribution, any hypothesis based on the historical record of tornadoes regarding the future of tornado occurrences as the global climate changes is going to remain speculative - which is to say, outside of the domain of good science.